KI-Media2 KI Media History and purpose of PUNCTUATION

Punctuation itself – literally, the act of adding “points” to a text – did not arrive until the 3rd century B.C. [before Christ], when Aristophanes of the great Library at Alexandria described a series of middle (·), low (.) and high points (˙) denoting short, medium and long pauses.

Over the centuries, this system gave rise to punctuation as we know it: from Aristophanes’ three dots came the colon, the full stop, and many other marks besides.

The word space was a late arrival, appearing only when monks in medieval England and Ireland began splitting apart unfamiliar Latin texts to make them easier to read.